Our Long Municipal Nightmare Continues

The latest RobFuckingFordFiasco is still developing, so maybe I should hold off.

But what the hell? Lookit that picture!

After a bunfest last night sponsored by Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee (whatever that is), Sarah Thomson, former mayoral candidate and no fave here at DJ!, posted that photo to her Facebook page with some allegations.

Former mayoral candidate Sarah Thomson says she wants an apology from Mayor Rob Ford for allegedly touching her inappropriately and making a suggestive remark to her at a party on Thursday night.

“He told me he was in Florida and I should have been with him because his wife wasn’t there,” Thomson told the Star on Friday. “I didn’t expect that. Rob doesn’t normally act that way towards women, so I was a little bit shocked and then we posed to get our picture taken and he grabbed my ass during the pose.”

Starting last night and ramping up as I type, all kinds of claims of lies and set-ups and drunkenness and substance abuse are flying around.

Ford's defenders are very LOUD. They're saying Thomson's story changed, she was drinking, Ford was NOT drinking (lookit that picture again), Thomson's out to get Ford etfuckingcetera.

She's being criticized for taking it to Facebook, for not being more discrete, again etfuckingcetera.

In short, she's being trashed.

However this turns out, on International Women's Day, we have yet another example of two seemingly eternal features of the patriarchy.

1. However a woman handles a sexual assault, it's the wrong way.

2. Women lie and can't be believed over men. No matter the circumstances.

Here's Neville Park's tidy summation.

She's well-connected, moneyed, with every privilege; he's widely disliked, history of lying—what chance do any of *us* have? #TOpoli #IWD
— Neville Park (@neville_park) March 8, 2013

Happy International Women's Day. Ford's timing is, as always, impeccable.

Bonus: Right now, Thomson and Daniel Dale of the Star are doing a live online interview. I assume it will remain available at that link when it's over. If not, I'll come back and update.

Added by deBeauxOs - Since Rob Fucking Ford's credibility is at issue, just thought I'd stick this in here, too.

Mayor Rob Ford has angered teachers and parents at the Etobicoke high school where he coaches football — and prompted an investigation by the Catholic school board — with comments the teachers say depicted the school in a “demeaning way that was filled with untruths.”

Read the whole story.


UPDATE (12:45 p.m.) Team Ford is going with Total Mystified Denial. Not She Misinterpreted. Not I Apologize Not That I Did Anything Wrong.

And not only denial. He calls her a liar. As in this gob-smacking sentence.

What is more surprising is that a woman who has aspired to be a civic leader would cry wolf on a day where we should be celebrating women across the globe.

I believe that wolf will come back to bite him on his MASSIVE ass.

The Male Mind

Back in the 80s, I worked at a communications company (they were all the rage) owned and run by four male partners. As a freelancer, I was given free office space in return for 'priortizing' their work. There were two other women working there under the same deal.

The three of us used to go out for lunch a couple times a week and talk inevitably turned to the partners. They didn't like each other. More mystifyingly, they didn't trust each other.

Partners would ask us gals suspiciously about the doings of another partner. We owed nobody any loyalty but it was uncomfortable.

Mainly, it was just plain weird. Every lunch ended with us shaking our heads and wondering how people who didn't trust each other could be in biz together.

Maybe it was then or later that I twigged: Men much more than women can compartmentalize. Hive off the personal from the business. I've seen it in sweetie. He used to employ a raging misogynist racist occasionally because the guy was a genius with an air brush. After much prodding from me, he agreed to shut the asshole up when he got on one of his rants. But he still used him.

(I fully realize I've opened a can of worms here. Men do this, women do that crap. But over my long life, I've seen many many more men than women willing to overlook personal failings, value failings, character failings, if someone is useful to them.)

OK, the reason for this. Today, on Twitter, someone retweeted a message from a male voter saying he'd just voted in an advance poll for Sarah Thomson, the Lib candidate in Trinity Spadina, my riding. I replied asking if the the voter knew that Thomson when running for Toronto mayor endorsed privatizing libraries and killing Transit City. Dude replied that he did know that, but did I know that she is the best choice for TrinSpa.

I replied that anyone who would privatize libraries was not my kinda person. In increasingly patronizing replies @Fizbandu, aka Bradley Hammond, kindly pointed out that these were quite separate jurisdictions.

Duh.

Here's his second-last tweet. (The last one was just dumb and irrelevant to this.)

@fernhilldammit @ThomsonTO You need to understand that as a MPP there is no direct connection, again municipal council. #VoteON

I need to understand that, do I?

Well, Bradley needs to understand that what a person says in one context is entirely applicable to any other context.

If Sarah Thomson would privatize libraries, what else would she privatize?

Inquiring minds. . .

But to the male mind, entirely separate issues.

The floor is open for excoriating me for essentialism, sexism, anti-maleism, whatever.